McCartney Says Working on Destiny was a 'Learning Process'

We all scratched our heads a bit when Bungie revealed Sir Paul McCartney was helping out with the original score for Destiny. In a recent interview on radio station KMMS, his involvement is a little bit clearer, and actually might make a little more sense.

Chris Griffin, from our radio affiliate KMMS, spoke with McCartney earlier this week about his new tour and album, but more importantly, McCartney's work on Bungie's Destiny. Griffin asked the former Beatle about working with former Destiny composer Martin O'Donnell, and what the process was like creating music for a video game of this scale for the first time.

"Marty got in touch with me, and at that time I didn't really know too much about the game," McCartney said. "You know, I knew about Halo, but I didn't understand what was involved in making soundtracks and what they wanted from me." He went on to describe the work as a "real learning process," and offered that while O'Donnell was primarily still responsible for all the scoring, McCartney did offer some riffs and feedback along the way.

"I just threw [Martin] a few hooks, really," he added. "I thought, 'You know, this'll be good,' and if he's going to make a whole score, I threw him things to develop. I'd give him a sequence of notes, and he would sent them back to me, and I'd say, 'You know what we should do with this? How about this?' And we'd just keep sending ideas to each other."

During this process, McCartney said Bungie asked if he'd be willing to contribute a full song. He didn't go into any detail about this new track or where it might play into Destiny, but McCartney did say it was an exciting project to partake in. "What I love about [Destiny], is that my music will be heard by a whole new bunch of people," McCartney stated. "A whole other generation. A whole other type. That's exciting to me. The world of how people listen is changing constantly, and I think this is one of the exciting ways."

Griffin then asked whether or not McCartney believed gaming, and new technology, could be considered the 21st century Ed Sullivan. "There is that aspect to it," McCartney replied. "It's the way people get noticed and discovered, you know. I love to enter new worlds. That's something I've always liked to do. The video game [genre] is a great place to get into."

Destiny will be available on the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One on Sept. 9. You can check out the full interview with Sir Paul McCartney below.